Pseudo-Passives as Adjectival Passives

PACLIC 28 !48 Pseudo-Passives as Adjectival Passives Kwang-sup Kim Hankuk University of Foreign Studies English Department 81 Oedae-lo Cheoin-Gu Yongin-City 449-791 Republic of Korea kwangsup@hufs.ac.kr Abstract The pseudo-passive is peculiar in that (i) the DP that appears to be the complement of a preposition undergoes passivization, and (ii) it is semantically characterized by the fact that it describes a resultant state or a characteristic of the Theme. The first peculiarity can be explained if the DP is not the complement of P but the complement of the V-P complex. However, the problem with this approach is that V and P cannot form a constituent in the corresponding active. In this paper, however, I propose that we can maintain the V-P complex approach if it is an adjectival passive. The adjectival passive describes a characteristic of the Theme, and it does not necessarily correspond to its active counterpart with regard to the internal argument structure. This suggests that the peculiarities of the pseudo-passive follow if it is an adjectival passive. This paper claims that it is indeed the case. In short, I claim that the passive morpheme in the pseudo-passive is the adjectival passive –en, which is empirically supported by the fact that they display the properties of adjectival passives. 1 Introduction It is well-known that once an argument is assigned Case, it cannot undergo further A-movement. However, pseudo-passives are quite peculiar in that the DP that appears to be the complement of a preposition moves to a Case position. (1) a. The hat was sat upon. b. These carpets have never been walked on. A plausible approach to this peculiarity is to argue that in (1a) sit upon is a constituent, and the hat is the complement of sit upon, not upon (Radford 1988, Drummond & Kush 2011). (2) the hat was [[sat upon] the hat]] |___________________| If this approach is correct, it is predicted that sit upon must be a constituent in the active as well as in the passive. However, there are insurmountable pieces of evidence that it cannot be a constituent in the active (Postal 1986, Koster 1987, and Baltin and Postal 1996). For instance, the objects can be conjoined, as illustrated in (3a-b), but in the active counterpart of (1a) the hat cannot be conjoined, as shown in (4a-b). (3) a. John bought a chair. b. John bought not a chair but a hat. (4) a. John sat upon the chair b. *John sat upon not the chair but the hat.1 This suggests that the hat is not the complement of sat upon in (4a). Copyright 2014 by Kwang-sup Kim 28th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation pages 48–56 PACLIC 28 !49 (5) a. *John [[sat upon] not a chair but a hat]. b. John sat [PP upon a hat]. If we assume that (1a) is analyzed as (2), we can explain why the hat can undergo passivization, but sat upon cannot be a constituent in (4a). This puts us in a dilemma, since …

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